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K. Trueshell
2 April 2024
Healthy Eating: Income Matters More Than You Think
Eating healthy is a goal that many often have. Whether it is to start a diet or
continue to eat better, this goal is often not met. A researcher from the United States
Centers for Disease Control named Seung Hee Lee found that “In 2019, 12.3% and
10.0% of surveyed adults met fruit and vegetable intake recommendations,
respectively” which is a surprising metric that many in the United states do not meet the
daily portions of fruits and vegetables (p.1). The questions that came to my mind first
were, “What are some of the causes of this? As well as: What groups are impacted the
most?”. I thought of the implications of why people do not eat healthy and I wondered
about those who may not be able to afford to eat healthy. In the same article mentioned
above, Seung Lee also discovered that adults with higher income had higher
percentages of meeting daily vegetable requirements than those in the lowest income
bracket. His research states that 12.2% of people with higher income and 6.8% with low
income meet recommendations set by the USDA (Lee, p. 3). These people in
lower-income households have a harder time being able to eat healthy, both inside and
outside of the home. Many of these families with low income are food insecure, and
more prone to obesity (Waite, p. 327). This issue that many disadvantaged groups have
is complex and would require many things to change. I admit that there are many more
sides to this problem that I can present in this paper.
One of the problems is the pricing of food. It is a large factor in why many people
cannot afford to eat healthily. We can trace this modern problem back to when
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companies started using Ford’s Assembly line. It maximized profits and minimized time
spent making said product. George Ritzer in his book “The McDonaldization of Society”
states that the automobile assembly line “gave many people ready access to affordable
automobiles, which in turn led to the immense expansion of the highway system and the
tourist industry that grew up alongside it.” He then declares that “Restaurants, hotels,
campgrounds, gas stations, and the like arose as the precursors that lie at the base of a
McDonaldized society.”(pg. 35). The term McDonaldization refers to the main principles
of fast food restaurants dominating more sectors of American society (Ritzer pg. 1).
During the boom of the 1950s when fast food restaurants became more popular, the
assembly line was used to produce mediocre quality food at the cheapest price
possible. It is more convenient for a person to buy a meal than it is to prepare it. This
paved the way for other companies to use the same strategies to mass produce cheap
products. They made them widely available to the public by taking advantage of the
surge in automobile travel during that time.
Another part of the history of making cheap, processed foods is the Farm Bill,
passed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 during the Great Depression.
Officially called The Agricultural Adjustment Act, this bill provided much-needed
economic relief for farmers during the Great Depression. It helped food markets have a
wider variety of produce at a cheaper price so that Americans could still meet nutritional
standards at the time and keep farmers from going bankrupt. This bill still exists today
and greatly impacts what and when farmers grow certain crops. However, as currently
upheld, it negatively affects the American population. Alyson Waite comments in the
Toledo Law Journal that this bill plays a large part in the current obesity epidemic and
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states that “...the bill incentivizes the overproduction of fats, sugars, and oils through
commodity farming subsidies”(p.328). The United States government pays farmers to
grow certain crops. Combine the overproduction of commodity crops and an extremely
efficient way to process them(i.e. the assembly line) and you have a system that can
mass produce high caloric food with little to no nutritional value.
Waite also argues that "Due to subsidies, food companies are able to purchase
government commodities at artificially cheap prices, which encourages the overuse of
government-incentivized crops in processed foods throughout the public's food
supply."(331) This causes an influx of these cheap commodity crops that companies
can process into cheap, high-calorie, low-nutrient-dense foods. These subsidies allow
farmers to grow crops such as corn, which can be used to manufacture high fructose
corn syrup for a very low price. These low costs lead to many food companies opting to
use it as a sweetener cheaper than real sugar. It is now used in nearly all processed
foods here in the U.S.. The subsidies mentioned are one of the causes of why many
junk foods are much cheaper and abundant than their healthy counterparts. People
generally want to save money and will buy products that are convenient and affordable.
For those who do not have the time or resources to prepare their own food, it is
significantly harder to meet nutritional recommendations as set by the USDA.
So what exactly are the standards set by the U.S. government when it comes to
nutrition? According to the recommendations they provide the average person eating
2,000 calories a day should consume 2.5 cups of vegetables, 2 cups of fruit, 6 ounces
of grains (half of which should be whole grains), 3 cups of Dairy, 5.5 ounces of Protein,
and 27 grams of oil daily (DGA p. 20). These guidelines are listed in the Dietary Guide
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for Americans 2020-2025. I will refer to this guide as DGA throughout the rest of my
writing. In DGA they recommend that all people try to meet these standards while
staying within daily caloric limits. These recommendations are based on the latest food
science and are updated every 5 years. These are very reasonable recommendations,
and I believe that with the proper encouragement and support, all people would be able
to comfortably meet these if it is their choice. What I want to do is to help those who
want to choose to eat healthy but cannot do so due to other limiting factors.
The USDA in DGA even admits that “the settings in which they live, learn, work,
play, and gather, and other contextual factors - including their ability to access healthy
and affordable food - strongly influence their choices.” (DGA p. x) They know that their
situation plays a role in being able to access healthy food. However, some guidelines
may be hard for low-income families to achieve consistently. For example, they
recommend that half of the grains we consume are Whole Grains. At Walmart in Utah in
March 2024, their Great Value Whole Wheat Loaf costs $1.97 while their white loaf
costs $1.42. The whole wheat loaf costs 55 cents more, and for impoverished families,
that 55 cents can make the difference. Whole Grains cost more than white or more
processed loaves. Even though 55 cents is not much like I mentioned before, it could
prevent the purchase of other important foods that are also recommended by the
USDA. They also suggest varying the veggies and proteins we consume and focusing
on whole fruits(DGA pg. 13). Prices vary heavily between fruits and different vegetables.
An example is oranges versus berries. Oranges are very cheap compared to a box of
berries pound for pound. If people only buy the most affordable type of fruit, it can cause
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a diet that feels monotonous. Varying the diet may not be an option for those who need
to save at every possible purchase.
The USDA publishes a set of Food Plans every month representing “a nutritious,
practical, cost-effective diet” (USDA Thrifty Food Plan pg. 1). These costs that I will
review with you reflect the costs of a family of 4 that prepare all their meals and snacks
at home. The monthly cost for an average family of 4 according to them is to spend
$976.60 a month on food. This value is from their “Thrifty Food Plan” or their lowest-cost
food plan. The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States also gave in a report that
the median income of full-time workers was $1,145 weekly. Which roughly equates to
$59,540 a year or $4,961.67 a month. With this spending budget provided by the
government, food would consist of 19.7% of monthly expenses. This price represents
food that is solely bought at the supermarket and prepared at home. That is a
considerable chunk of the monthly budget even for average-income families.
The problem then becomes how much of the monthly budget people with lower
income brackets have to spend to achieve the same standards. The United States
government considers any household with a combined income of less than 30,000
dollars a year as below the poverty line. If a family making $30,000 a year needs to
spend $976.60 a month on food alone, it severely impacts what else they can do with
their already limited money. They would be spending 39.1% of their monthly income on
food. These numbers are what people should be spending on food to achieve a healthy
diet according to the government. The problem with this is when you start to account for
other things like rent, utilities, and transportation. According to Apartment Lists data for
February 2024, the average American renting price was $1548.18. $976.60 plus an
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average rent of 1548.18 would cost $2524.78 which is $24.78 more than what an
impoverished family would make monthly. This still does not cover transportation, utility
costs, insurance, medical bills, or emergency expenses. How does a family like that
make ends meet and still eat a healthy diet? To answer that question, in short, they do
not.
So far, I have explained that low production costs of cheap foods and current
living prices contribute to the problem of lower-income classes not being able to eat
healthily. The effects on the health of unhealthy food environments are appalling and
needs to be highlighted. Because of unhealthy diets and unhealthy living habits, about a
third of all adults in the United States are obese as of 2022 (CDC 2022). Obesity also
accounts for nearly 500,000 deaths per year in the United States (Valviedoo p. 555).
This becomes a problem when we realize that for some, all these unhealthy,
high-calorie foods are some of the only things that are available to them. They become
obese and end up getting chronic nutrition-related diseases such as diabetes. These
unhealthy food environments affect all people living in the U.S. but have the largest
impact on the poor.
Touching back on the Farm Bill I mentioned earlier in the paper, Alyson Waite
points out that these “agricultural subsidies provided by the Farm Bill both damage the
country’s health and increase the medical costs needed to treat the obesity epidemic”(p.
332). A higher medical cost to treat things like diabetes means that people and their
insurance would have to pay higher costs. These unhealthy food environments lead to
people who are at the poverty line needing medical treatment. They go to their doctor
and get billed, possibly going into debt if surgery or expensive medications are
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prescribed. This then makes them even more reliant on government programs making it
harder for medical professionals to treat others promptly. They then are still not able to
eat healthy because they have this medical debt but cannot change their eating habits
due to income. They then get sicker, causing more medical bills and less spending
power, and this vicious cycle could repeat until the expiration of the person. To me, this
problem seems to be self-perpetuated by the fact that these unhealthy foods sell more
than healthy foods causing companies to market them more and to produce more.
If we are to reform this Farm Bill to better suit our needs, some major reforms to
how the bill works would be needed. Instead of incentivizing the current crops that are
used to produce unhealthy oils, fats, and sugars, it needs to incentivize a larger diversity
of crops that would benefit the public’s health rather than hurt it. In its current form,
farmers feel like they can only produce commodity crops to stay profitable. (Waite
p.338). So a reform of this bill could lead to farmers producing more crops for local
populations and for export to supermarkets, stopping shortages of produce, and
increasing the variety of produce that consumers can buy at the market. The amount of
produce in our supermarkets is relatively small when we take into account that only 2%
of all our farmland is used to grow fruits and vegetables. (Waite p.339) If farmers had
more financial incentives to grow different crops, the food environment of our
supermarkets would change greatly. However, as long as the U.S. government
recommends healthy foods while incentivizing unhealthy ones, America is doomed to
obesity and poor health.
Obesity is a problem of overnutrition rather than undernutrition. Even if people
do have the money to buy healthy food, considering the statistics of obesity rates, not
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many people even eat healthily. As the diversity of processed foods dominate the
market, this has resulted in a sharp increase in calorie intake due to a very wide choice
of processed foods (Vadiveloo p. 561). People might not eat healthily because they view
healthy foods as boring or bad tasting. Diet attrition is very high in today’s age. Diet
attrition is when people who start diets but then give up and revert to their previous diet.
One of these reasons is the lack of variety in healthy foods like produce. Healthy diets
are simply seen as boring and monotonous.
A possible solution that I propose is to educate the public that healthy food can
be interesting and flavorful. People do not eat healthily because they do not see an
appeal to do so. A program that would teach people how to prepare nutritious foods
might persuade them to eat healthily. It would also allow them to see a healthier diet in a
new light and not as monotonous or boring as they once thought. Educating the public
with recipes or proper cooking methods might change how the general public looks at
healthy eating.
Another solution would be to increase the variety of healthy foods available to the
general public. An increased variety could lead to a healthier food environment and
make healthier diets more appealing (Vadiveloo p.561). Many people would want to try
new things if there was a wider variety to buy. Adding a couple of enjoyable healthy
foods to one’s diet could be the difference between healthy living and micronutrient
deficiency.
Many in the U.S currently suffer from micronutrient deficiency and Mica Jenkins
in her research states that one of the causes is lack of food fortification policies that the
USDA enforces (Jenkins p.2). Promoting a diverse diet of vegetables and fruit could
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solve this problem as well. The U.S. government could also enact more food fortification
policies making cheaper foods more nutrient-dense than previous versions. This could
be a solution that makes unhealthy foods provide more micronutrients, but does not
solve macronutrient overloads in consumers. To solve this, Americans need education
on how to eat healthily. Many of them never received nutritional education or have long
forgotten it.
You could say that impoverished people cannot afford healthy food because of
bad spending habits. I do admit that this could be one of the issues plaguing the lower
class. However, it could be that they do not know how to spend or save. They simply do
not have the same financial habits that wealthier people do. Herein lies a possible
solution to this problem. We could provide training or an educational program on how to
make wise financial choices so that people know how to spend their money. This would
lead to more people being able to afford things that matter and not waste their
hard-earned money. A better financial education would also give them a better chance
at escaping poverty, making this solution great for both arguments. The spending habits
issue would be solved and another factor would be removed from why many cannot
afford healthy food.
Many say that healthy food is easy and affordable to prepare. While true for
some foods, most healthier foods take time to either cut, peel, cook, or prepare for
cooking. As an example, I will compare two common breakfast items in the household:
Pop-Tarts and eggs. Eggs are a common household staple, and pop-tarts are an easy
breakfast that is found in many American households. The prices between the two are
similar with a dozen eggs costing an average of $2.50 per dozen eggs and the
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economic Walmart brand of pop tarts costs $1.92 per box. Both would be suitable for 6
breakfasts. The large difference is the preparation time. These breakfast pastries are
ready to eat out of the box and can be taken with you on the go. Eggs require time to
cook, are more difficult to take on the go, and require cleanup after cooking has been
completed. For some, this extra time of preparation and cleanup is not worth the
nutritional benefit. They would rather have something to fill them up to last them until the
next meal, rather than take this extra time to prepare, cook, and then clean up a
nutritious meal.
Meal delivery programs could help people prepare nutritious and convenient
meals. The general premise of these companies is that you buy a set amount of meals
during a week, and these meals are pre-prepared and ready to cook. These websites
claim that their meals can be cooked and ready to serve quickly. If this claim is true, this
could solve the convenience part of eating healthy while still offering the satisfaction of
cooking something yourself. Easy to cook, simple recipes with all ingredients prepared
and portioned would help close the gap between the convenience of a home-cooked
meal versus eating out. Since it is also delivered to the person's home, it also removes
the need to shop at the grocery store to buy the ingredients needed for a meal. I do
admit that this solution might not be viable for those with a very limited budget.
However, combined with education on how to make smart financial choices, it might
become viable for those who can afford it.
While researching these meal delivery programs, my mind also wondered about
the possibility of supplementing a current diet with an alternative healthy food. I found a
certain “Superfood” called Spirulina. This food is a type of algae that can be grown in
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many places. It is very nutrient-dense and provides many micro and macronutrients that
your body needs. In the Marine Drugs journal in an article published in 2022, they
mention that “space agencies such as the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) have promoted it as a food and supplement for astronauts during
their space missions since small amounts are able to provide different nutrients and
protective effects” (Fais pg.1). If the government provided the same subsidies that they
do for growing other staple crops, spirulina would become even cheaper, allowing for
wider use in the public. People could eat spirulina or incorporate it into their current
diets to help with micronutrient deficiency and to be able to receive much-needed
nutrients that they would not consume otherwise. It is relatively cheap but will be made
cheaper if it is in high demand. It still does not replace healthy eating, but at least it is
supplementing an unhealthy diet with valuable micronutrients that the body needs.
I would also like to emphasize my point once again of how the poor have a
harder time eating healthily. In Jenkin’s study, they also found that wealthier American
adolescents were 32% more likely to eat nuts and seeds and 22% more likely to eat
leafy greens than lower-income American adolescents (Jenkins p.5). Adolescents
usually eat what their parents buy them, and while personal preference does play a role,
it also depends on what their parents stock their home pantry with. If parents cannot
afford nuts or seeds, then their household simply will not have them. This goes for all
food groups. The research done by Seung Lee shows that the environment that people
are raised in affects their opportunities to have a healthy lifestyle later on (Lee p.8).
Eating a variety of healthy foods early on is of utmost importance for raising healthy
children who will continue to eat healthy later on. If a parent cannot provide good food to
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their children, their children will have a harder time creating good eating habits (Jenkins
p.1-2).
If we are to solve this problem, let us solve it for the sake of the rising
generation. If middle-class and lower-class Americans do not have the incentive to eat
healthily or cannot afford it, it will only hurt us in the long run. We have to solve this
problem to solve the obesity epidemic and to help curb the amount of people with
nutrition-related chronic illnesses. We have this duty to help others eat healthily when
they cannot afford it themselves. This is a complicated problem with many facets.
However, these problems can be solved steps at a time. The most important part is that
we take steps to solve it rather than watching the problem progress. If these problems
continue, and healthy food becomes more and more expensive, soon many more will
have this problem. As long as we can change the current food environment that we find
ourselves in, all will have the freedom to choose a healthy lifestyle.
Works Cited
Jenkins, Mica, et al. “What Do United States Adolescents Eat? Food Group Consumption Patterns and Dietary
Diversity from a Decade of Nationally Representative Data.” Current Developments in Nutrition, vol. 7, no. 8,
Aug. 2023, pp. 1–12. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cdnut.2023.101968.
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Waite, Alyson. “United States Farm Policy Reform in Supporting Dietary Diversity and Combating Monocropping.”
University of Toledo Law Review, vol. 54, no. 2, Winter 2023, pp. 327–53. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=162524906&site=ehost-live.
Conrad, Zach, et al. “Greater Vegetable Variety and Amount Are Associated with Lower Prevalence of Coronary
Heart Disease: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1999-2014.” Nutrition Journal, vol. 17, no.
1, July 2018, p. N.PAG. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12937-018-0376-4.
Vadiveloo, Maya, et al. “Dietary Variety Is Inversely Associated with Body Adiposity among US Adults Using a Novel
Food Diversity Index.” Journal of Nutrition, vol. 145, no. 3, Mar. 2015, pp. 555–63. EBSCOhost,
https://doi.org/10.3945/jn.114.199067.
Lee, Seung Hee, et al. “Adults Meeting Fruit and Vegetable Intake Recommendations - United States, 2019.”
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, vol. 71, no. 1, 6
Jan. 2022 pp.1-9, cdc.gov http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm7101a1.
Jack, Darby, et al. "Socio-economic status, neighborhood food environments and consumption of fruits and
vegetables in New York City" Public Health Nutrition, Vol 16, no. 7, 2013, pp. 1197-1205. Cambridge Core
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1368980012005642.
US Department of Health and Human Services and US Department of Agriculture. "Dietary Guidelines for Americans
2015–2020", U.S. Government Printing Office Appendix 3. 8th ed, Dec. 2020, pp. 1-149. U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/
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Service, February 2024, pp. 1, USDA Website,
https://www.fns.usda.gov/cnpp/usda-food-plans-cost-food-monthly-reports
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, "Median weekly earnings of full-time workers were $1,145 in
the fourth quarter of 2023" The Economics Daily, Jan. 25, 2024, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Website,
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2024/median-weekly-earnings-of-full-time-workers-were-1145-in-the-fourth-qua
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Ritzer, George "The McDonaldization of Society: Revised New Century Edition" Pine Forge Press 2004
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https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/category/data-rent-estimates
Fais, Giacomo et al. “Wide Range Applications of Spirulina: From Earth to Space Missions.” Marine drugs vol. 20,5
299. 28 Apr. 2022, doi:10.3390/md20050299
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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity: Data Trends and Maps”
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
https://nccd.cdc.gov/dnpao_dtm/rdPage.aspx?rdReport=DNPAO_DTM.ExploreByTopic&islClass=OWS&islT
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